The egyptians kept stellar records and there's no record of 100k people wandering the wilderness of a 20 mile stretch of land for 40 years. It's hard to fathom that'd go unnoticed.
It's also a fact that the books of moses were first written down about 800 years after he would've lived...so how can that be infallible if it's passed by word of mouth.... Ever play the telephone game?
The best evidence is that the egyptians were very biased in what was recorded in ways that would be likely to have survived (triumphs, yes, defeats, not so much) and that even when things were recorded, events and persons who later fell into disfavor were actively eradicated from the kind of durable, monumental records that would be most likely to survive.
> and there’s no record of 100k people wandering the wilderness of a 20 mile stretch of land for 40 years.
What 20 mile stretch of land are you talking about? With the classical (but probably wrong) association of the Yam Suph with the Gulf of Suez, the “wilderness” would have been (or at least started) on the Sinai Peninsual, which is more than 20 miles in either dimension. (There’s a number of other interpretations of the Yam Suph, including the Gulf of Aqaba, which would have put the wilderness in (again, starting in) Arabia. (There’s good reasons to doubt the Exodus story, but you’ve completely missed the real ones: while the absence of records of the actual Exodus is much less surprising than you make, the absence of evidence of anything like the population that supposedly took part in it ever existing in Egypt at any time in order to leave in the Exodus is the big one.)
> It’s also a fact that the books of moses were first written down about 800 years after he would’ve lived…so how can that be infallible if it’s passed by word of mouth.... Ever play the telephone game?
Societies with high literacy may not be good at maintaining stable oral traditions, but those without it are known to be. Even if that weren’t true, mundane written documents aren’t infallible either, believing in infallible writing usually involves invoking a special divine gift of inspiration. But if that works for writing, there’s no reason it can’t work for oral tradition, or for writing that is remote from events.
The animals were created globally first. Once Adam was created, God created animals again so Adam could see the process, understand that God is Creator, and participate in ruling over God's creation.
Interesting website choice. I spent a year as an agnostic because of that website before I started to realize there must be another perspective to consider.
I believe there are resources out there that can help someone to faithfully interpret. And the converse also. The skeptics annotated Bible being in the latter category IMO.
A: everything in this book is literally true
B: what about this passage where it says 3+4=9?
A: my interpretation of that passage is that the 9 represents a 7 in that particular context
The salient point being: that even if A has arrived at a literally true interpretation of the passage, the truth came from A, not from the passage. Further, although A believes they're arguing that the book is inerrant, what they're effectively claiming is that their interpretations are inerrant.
> what they're effectively claiming is that their interpretations are inerrant.
I don’t think A is claiming that, as the most basic understanding of Christianity understands that the individual is terribly flawed and errant.
If your presupposition for this conclusion is based on your earlier point might have either misstated something or you’re claiming a conclusion without an expressed premise.
Humans aren't rational beings that form conclusions by logically composing facts into a singular point. Instead humans are more prone to construct a scaffold of logic in order to support and existing belief. That site is picking and choosing passages in order to support a misguided belief.
Instead a person must start with no beliefs and formulate a conclusion from the facts. If you do this, it is undeniable that the bible is real.
I once told this to an atheist and he was astonished because my description of his subconscious behavior and lack of awareness was 100% what he thought I was doing.
This makes me wonder do atheists even realize how unscientific and illogical they are? Are they constantly thinking that I'm the one that's illogical? Are humans so unaware of their own biases that we can never ever truly determine what is real and what isn't?
I also think you are being quite uncharitable to most atheists. The majority of us grew up in the church, have read the bible, utterly believed the bible was true, were devout believers, and generally were at some point quite indistinguishable from you or any other truly intellectual believer in terms of worldview.
It really was the kinds of contradictions the comment you replied to indicates, along with hundreds of others, and the absolute mental knots that had to be constructed in order to justify them that set me on the path of disbelief. This is the path for millions of people as they take a serious reckoning of their beliefs and with their holy books and do a fundamental reexamination of their entire worldview and belief structure.
I don't think that either of us is being disingenuous in our portrayal of our beliefs. That said, I really do think that your interpretation of what people are doing when they examine these contradictions and draw the conclusion of disbelief is, in fact, the theological equivalent of p-hacking is fundamentally untrue.
>This makes me wonder do atheists even realize how unscientific and illogical they are? Are they constantly thinking that I'm the one that's illogical? Are humans so unaware of their own biases that we can never ever truly determine what is real and what isn't?
You're an atheist too, towards other religions like Islam, Hinduism etc. When you truly understand that your arguments against those religions go against Christianity too, you will understand atheists.
Just using the linguistics of the word, "Atheists" are definitively people who do not believe in a theos, ie: a g/God. It would be nonsensical to call a polytheist or monotheist an atheist.
> When you truly understand that your arguments against those religions go against Christianity too...
Christianity is relatively unique[1] in the sense that it claims exclusivity to salvation through Jesus Christ. As it relates to your argument, this tenant allows Christians to make claims to spiritual supremacy. Interreligious comparisons are moot at that point.
[1] Conditioning that statement here, I can't keep up with all the world's religions
I don’t think you should be so confident that everyone else sees it this way.
If what everyone else thinks is a factor, than the majority of the world is not atheist.
You think I’m illogical. I think you’re illogical. In the end we’re just two Spidermans, pointing at each other.
What verifiable facts are in the Bible?
Can any of the claimed miracles be replicated today? Say handling snakes or drinking poison, which has resulted in multiple deaths of believers.
Two religious people can't agree which parts of the Bible are literal and which are just a story, so it's funny to see accusations at the other side.
Lack of the ability to replicate something means that it is just hard to prove that something is true. Not being able to prove something to be true via replication does not mean it is not true.
But you’re proceeding to form a logical, rational argument in saying this. How are we to ever understand what you’re intending?
A person born into atheism isn't just going to change sides as soon as he's presented with evidence that Christianity is real. Rather he will twist and bend the existing evidence in a way so as to support is current world view.
When you do place together all the facts, logically speaking, what follows is that the bible is real.
Atheism is non-belief.
For example, I don't lack a belief that an elephant is in my living room, I have a positive belief that there is no such elephant.
I do think it’s useful to highlight here though that the difference between belief and non-belief is not pedantry, and it’s not inconsequential.
The entire scientific method is about challenging ideas to discover the truth. When a scientist makes a claim to another scientist, the default position is “I don’t believe it. Please show substantial evidence to support your claim.”
This is different from faith-based scientism, which is more similar to any other faith-based ism in that the method is to protect ideas from challenge in order to preserve the “truth”.
>I do think it’s useful to highlight here though that the difference between belief and non-belief is not pedantry, and it’s not inconsequential.
If you don't wish to continue arguing with me why the heck are you still highlighting things? The difference is pedantic. It's like talking about the difference between adding a negative number and subtracting a positive number.
You believe something exists.
You disbelieve something doesn't exist.
You believe something doesn't exist.
You disbelieve something doesn't exist.
>The entire scientific method is about challenging ideas to discover the truth. When a scientist makes a claim to another scientist, the default position is “I don’t believe it. Please show substantial evidence to support your claim.”
The scientific method cannot ever discover the truth. Proof is the domain of math and logic. In science and therefore the real world, nothing can be proven. To quote Einstein: "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
Science is not about proving things to be true. The entire endeavor of science is an attempt to prove something false. Repeated failures to prove something false only indicates that something "might" be true.
This coupled with the fact that all observations tools in science have limited accuracy and limited precision makes it such that even the act of disproof is done through the lens of probability. Or in other words, nothing can really be disproven either. This is a bit philosophical and a bit too pedantic but the point is to illustrate that I understand the scientific method to a degree greater than even most atheists.
>This is different from faith-based scientism, which is more similar to any other faith-based ism in that the method is to protect ideas from challenge in order to preserve the “truth”.
Let me reiterate my point. My stance is not faith-based. It is self-evident logic. Every religious person you talk to parrots the buzz word of "faith" but really what they are saying to you is that their "belief" to them is as logical and rational as science is to you.
You must willfully ignore all the hard questions you can't answer.
But the "teachings" basically boil down to "treat others how you would like to be treated. There is nothing god like in that... its pure evolutionary pragmatism.
I haven’t been able to find a single contradiction that hasn’t been answered by a cogent explanation that includes the surrounding context, intertext references and ties to larger overarching themes. And believe me, I love and enjoy peering deeply into those holes.
Perhaps the beauty is that those 66 books written over centuries tell a continuous and noncontradicting story.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t difficult sections of scripture. There are things that come off as quotes that are actually paraphrases. There are different point of views between the gospels that insist 1 person was there when 2 people were in another account of the same situation. These are easily remedied when you consider the focus and theme of the book and the clear intentions of the author.
The authors are indeed flawed (as humans, standing in the pages of history), but they write with the inspiration of God himself and make no error in recording their account.
Happy to help with other concerns.